December 29, 2012

Earl Grey & Vanilla Bean Birthday Cake

It's my mother's birthday again! My mom loves tea, so I decided to make her a little earl grey cake this year. Since earl grey is a pretty mild, delicate flavor, I decided to accompany it with a subtle vanilla bean buttercream.

My mom also loves roses. Last year, I made her some pink chocolate plastic roses for her chocolate raspberry cake. This year, I've done more roses in fondant and used them to hold each of the five candles. I made them a dusky blue color to go with the earl grey cake, and added a little shimmer using pearl dust.

To make the roses, I once again followed Wilton's tutorial, with a couple modifications. After making the rose center, I pushed a candle into it. I also did four blossom layers instead of three to make a fuller rose.

For the cake recipe, I started with a Chai Cake recipe from Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes. Instead of using chai tea bags, I used earl grey and left the chai spices out. I've followed this recipe before, and found it to be a little dry. In an effort to offset this dryness, I decided to do six layers - each with some creamy buttercream in between. I was hoping that the abundant buttercream would make the cake more moist.

I still thought this was a little dry, but everyone else (my mom included) said the buttercream did its job and the cake seemed nice and moist. I was pretty happy with the earl grey - it made for a really nice, interesting cake flavor. I may re-visit this recipe to try and tone down the dryness, but for now it made a great little birthday cake.

Cube the butter and leave out at room temperature (make sure you
don't leave it over the dishwasher or oven or it will get too warm).

Whisk the eggs whites and sugar together in the top part of a double
broiler. Make sure that the water in the bottom part is simmering, not
boiling. Keep whisking until a candy thermometer reads 160° F.

Transfer to a stand mixer with the whisk attachment installed. Whip
at a medium speed until the mixture is at room temperature (the bowl
feels neutral when you touch it).

Lower the mixing speed and add the butter, one cube at a time. Keep
mixing until there is an obvious change in the consistency of the
buttercream - from soupy to much more solid (you can usually hear the
mixer start making different noises). If it stays soupy for a very long
time, throw the bowl in the refrigerator for ten minutes or so and
retry.

Add the vanilla extract, vanilla bean, and salt and keep mixing until they are incorporated.

Assembly

Level and torte (cut in half) each cake layer so that you have 6 even layers. I like using a cake leveler to do this.

Place your first cake layer on your decorating surface. Spread a thin
layer of buttercream evenly over the cake layer.
Place the next layer on top, and repeat. Repeat with the remaining
layers.

Spread a thin coat of buttercream over the top and sides of
the cake. Don't worry if you get crumbs in the frosting - that's what
this layer is for! Place the cake in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes
to allow the frosting to set.

Remove your cake from the refrigerator and frost with a final, thicker layer of buttercream.

As a cake-loving college student who started baking as a way to de-stess, I can't wait to add this recipe to my personal collection. How much food coloring did you use to achieve the shades of blue for the cake and the fondant roses? I'm very inspired by the artistry of your work!

Thanks! I used a combination of royal blue and violet food coloring to get the color for the cake and roses. I use Ateco's gel food coloring (http://www.amazon.com/Ateco-1112-12-Color-Food-Coloring/dp/B00004S1C6/). I add a very small amount at a time using a toothpick until I have the color desired.

What size square pan would you like to use? You can figure out how to change a recipe by taking the total area of the pans you would like to use, and dividing it by the area of the pans used in the recipe. Remember that for a circle, the area is pi * radius^2 and for a square the area is length^2. So, if you'd like to use a 8" square pan, for example, you would do:

So, we'd get 84.8/128 = 1.5. So, take my recipe and multiply each ingredient by 1.5. This is obviously going to be a bit tricky with the egg yolk - I usually just do my best to get a half egg yolk in this case.

I really liked the idea of adding Earl Grey to a cake, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was totally puzzled by the amount of flour you need though. I tried several different ways to measure the cups, but I always ended up with around 200 grams of cake flour. In the end I decided to go with 160 grams rather than the cups and I ended up with a -very- moist cake. I was wondering.. should I have gone with the cup-measurement instead then? Which of the two did you use?

I just made this with my mom for my birthday, and it was wonderful!! We ended up doubling the recipe (to feed more people), and it actually ended up being pretty moist (this is possibly due to my mixer mishap where I slopped out a bit of flour). Overall, it was an absolute hit; thank you so much for sharing!! :D

I just made this cake for the second time. I also found it a bit dry the first time around, so this time I increased the amount of mile to 3/4 cup instead of 2/3. I had to increase the cooking time by about 10 or 15 minutes, but the end result was wonderfully light and moist. I also used a lavender earl Grey tea instead of just regular earl grey this time, and really enjoyed the flavor.

Wow nice cake.It is looking so yummy.The birthday cake is the highlight of a party. There is nothing more enjoyable for a child or an adult for that matter than tucking into a big slice of birthday cake.

This is a fabulous idea... I have tried this method and it works great. This is one of the prettiest of these types of cakes I've seen! The color is beautiful, too!! Thanks so much for sharing this technique. Really, you did a fantastic job!